Gorky Park

by Martin Cruz Smith

  He came off Taganskaya, through the courtyard, up the stairs two at a time and knocked on the door. The sound was hollow. He unlocked the door and entered.

  Zoya had been back, that much was clear. There were no chairs or tables, rugs or curtains, books or bookshelves, records or record player, china, glasses or eating utensils. She had made a diligent sweep, a combination annexation and purge. In the first of the two rooms she’d left nothing but the refrigerator, and that was empty even of ice trays, which showed, he thought, a disappointing greed. In the second room the bed remained, so it was still a bedroom. He recalled how hard it had been to get the bed into the room. She’d left only the sheets and the blanket on the bed.

  His sensation was of being oddly bruised and empty, as if a burglar had crept not into the apartment but into him, and with dirty hands ripped out ten years of marriage. Or did she see it another way, her Caesarean birth out of him? Had it been that bad all the time? She was a good thief because now he didn’t want to remember.

  The telephone receiver was off the hook, which was why he’d thought she was home. He put the receiver back and sat beside the phone.

  What was happening to him? He was hated by someone who had once loved him. If she’d changed, he must have changed her. Him and his perfect record. Why didn’t he become an inspector for the Central Committee, what was so wrong about that? Become a shit and save his marriage. Who was he to be so pure? Look at what he’d just done, his fantasy about the black market and Siberians and Americans, one phony connection after another, not to solve any crime, not for the sake of justice, just to get those bodies from Gorky Park off his hands. Bluffing, squirming and dodging to keep his white hands clean.

  The phone rang. Zoya, he thought. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is this Chief Investigator Renko?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’s been a shooting at an apartment at Serafimov Two. A man called Golodkin is dead, and Detective Pavlovich, too.’

  A trail of militiamen led from the entrance up the stairs to the second floor, through a hall of faces at cracked doors and into Golodkin’s apartment, two and a half rooms of cartons of scotch, cigarettes, records and canned foods heaped on a floor thick with Oriental carpets laid one over the other. Levin was there fiddling with some instruments inside Golodkin’s head. Pasha Pavlovich was on the carpets, the back of his dark overcoat wet but not too wet; he’d died immediately. By his hand and by Golodkin’s lay separate guns.

  A borough investigator Arkady didn’t know presented himself and his notes.

  ‘It’s my guess,’ he said, ‘well, it’s obvious that this Golodkin shot the detective in the back first, then the detective turned and, as he fell, killed Golodkin in return. The people in the other apartments didn’t hear the shots, but the bullets would seem to be a match for the guns, the detective’s issue PM and Golodkin’s TK, though of course we’ll check that with ballistics analysis.’

  ‘The people in the other apartments, did they see anyone leave here?’ Arkady asked.

  ‘Nobody left. They killed each other.’

  Arkady looked at Levin, who looked away.

  ‘Detective Pavlovich was returning the other man here after an interrogation,’ Arkady said. ‘Did you search the detective? Did you find any tape-recorder reels?’

  ‘We searched him. We didn’t find any reels,’ the borough investigator answered.

  ‘Have you removed anything from the apartment?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Arkady went through Golodkin’s apartment looking for the church chest with the ikon panels, throwing armloads of parkas and skis out of the closets, cutting open cartons of French soaps while the borough investigator watched, rooted to one spot not just by anxiety that he’d have to account for the damage but out of horror for an assault on such valuables. When Arkady finally returned to the dead detective on the floor, the borough investigator ordered militiamen to start removing the goods.

  The shot that killed Golodkin left his forehead concave. Pasha seemed peaceful, eyes closed, his handsome Tartar face pressed into colored threads, a sleeping rider on a flying carpet. Golodkin’s chest was gone, the tapes were gone, Golodkin was dead.

  As Arkady went down to the street, the militiamen on the stairs were passing from hand to hand cartons of liquor, watches, clothes, a pineapple, skis, reminding him in spite of himself of ants laboring under crumbs.

  Chapter Nine

  Almost all Russia is old, graded by glaciers that left a landscape of low hills, lakes and rivers that wander like the trails of worms in soft wood. North of the city, Silver Lake was still frozen, and all the summer dachas on the lake were deserted, except Iamskoy’s.

  Arkady parked behind a Chaika limousine, went to the back door of the house and knocked. The prosecutor appeared at a window, motioned Arkady to wait and, five minutes later, emerged as the very picture of a boyar in a coat and boots trimmed with wolf fur. His bald head glowed pink with good health, and he set out immediately along the beach.

  ‘It’s the weekend,’ he said irritably. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘You don’t have a phone here.’ Arkady followed.

  ‘You don’t have the number. Stay here.’

  The ice was thick and dull at the center of the lake, fine and glassy at its edge. During the summer every cottage would have its family badminton game, bright parasols and pitcher of lemonade. Iamskoy had gone to a small shed about fifty meters from the house. He returned carrying a tin horn and a pail of fishmeal pellets.

  ‘I forgot. You must have had a house up here when you were a boy,’ Iamskoy said.

  ‘One summer, yes.’

  ‘I’m sure, a family like yours. Blow this.’ He handed the horn to Arkady.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just blow,’ Iamskoy ordered.

  Arkady put the cold mouthpiece to his lips and blew. A honk echoed across the ice. The second blast was louder, sounding again from the willows on the far side.

  Iamskoy took the horn back. ‘Too bad about your detective. What was his name?’

  ‘Pavlovich.’

  ‘Bad for you, too. If this profiteer Golodkin was so dangerous, you should have gone along and Pavlovich would still be alive. I’ve been getting calls all morning from the prosecutor general and the commissioner of Militia; they have my phone number out here. Don’t worry, I’ll protect you if that’s what you came to ask.’

  ‘It isn’t.’

  ‘No,’ Iamskoy sighed, ‘you wouldn’t. Pavlovich was a friend of yours, wasn’t he? You worked together before.’ He looked away from Arkady to the sky, a white haze that blended into the silver birches. ‘Wonderful place, Investigator. You should come up here later in the year. There are some excellent shops that have opened for the residents since you were a boy. We’ll go to them together and you can pick out something you want. Bring your wife.’

  ‘Pribluda killed him.’

  ‘Wait.’

  Iamskoy listened to a rustling from the trees right and left. Over the treetops rose strings of eiders, forming V’s as they gained height, the males white with black bellies and caps, the females gray. The geese circled the lake, their wings beating rapidly.

  ‘Pribluda had Pavlovich and Golodkin followed and killed.’

  ‘Why would Major Pribluda have any interest in this case?’

  ‘The suspect is an American businessman. I met him.’

  ‘How did you meet an American?’ Iamskoy began emptying the fishmeal pellets onto the ground. A deep cooing and whirring of wings stirred the air.

  ‘You led me to him.’ Arkady raised his voice. ‘At the bathhouse. You’ve been following the case very closely, as you said.’

  ‘I led you to him? That’s an enormous assumption.’ Iamskoy poured the pellets in a wavy, decorative line. ‘I have infinite respect for your abilities, and make no mistake, I will help you any way I can, but do not assume I “led” you to anyone. I don’t even want to know his name. Sssh!’ He stopped Arkady’s a
nswer and set the empty pail down.

  The eiders descended on a straight course, skidding in single file over the lake ice to a halt about thirty meters from the beach. There the birds directed a short-necked, suspicious glare at Iamskoy and Arkady until the men retreated toward the shed. Satisfied, the braver geese advanced in a portly waddle.

  ‘Handsome birds, aren’t they?’ Iamskoy said. ‘Unusual for this area. They winter around Murmansk, you know. I had a regular colony of them up there during the war.’

  More geese landed even while the leaders were stepping on shore, heads swiveling in search of danger.

  ‘Looking for foxes, always looking for foxes,’ Iamskoy said. ‘You must have some very damning evidence to make you suspect an officer of the KGB.’

  ‘We have a tentative identification of two of the Gorky Park bodies. We had a tape on which Golodkin had positively identified those two people as dealing with the American.’

  ‘Do you have Golodkin now? Do you have the tape?’

  ‘It was stolen from Pasha’s body in Golodkin’s apartment. There was a chest, too, at Golodkin’s.’

  ‘A chest. Does that exist now? Reading the borough investigator’s report of property, I saw no mention of any chest. Well, is that all? You want to charge a major of the KGB on the basis of a missing tape and a chest and the testimony of a dead man? Did Golodkin ever mention Major Pribluda?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I fail to understand what you’re talking about. I sympathize with you. You’re distraught over the death of a comrade. You have a personal dislike of Major Pribluda. But this is the wildest and least substantiated charge I’ve ever heard.’

  ‘The American has ties to the KGB.’

  ‘So? So do I, so do you. We all breathe air and we all piss water. All you’re telling me is that an American businessman is no fool. Frankly, how big a fool are you? For your own sake I hope you haven’t shared these irrational suspicions with anyone else. They had better not be in any report to my office—’

  ‘I want the investigation of Pasha’s murder under my personal direction, as part of the Gorky Park investigation.’

  ‘Let me finish. The sort of American you hint at has wealth, not merely money as you understand it, and a great many influential friends here – more even’ – Iamskoy put it kindly – ‘than you. What could those three people in Gorky Park have that would have been worth a minute of his time, let alone make them worth killing? A thousand rubles, a hundred thousand rubles may seem a lot to you, but not to a man like that. Sex? With his influence he could cover the most bizarre embarrassment. What is left? The fact is, nothing is left. You say you tentatively identified two of the bodies from the park. Were they Russian or foreign?’

  ‘Russian.’

  ‘See, you’re getting somewhere. Russian, not foreign, nothing that concerns Pribluda or the KGB. As for Detective Pavlovich’s death, he and Golodkin killed each other, it’s in the report. It seems to me that the borough investigator is doing an efficient job without your assistance. Of course his final report will go to you. But I will not let you interfere. I know you. First, you wanted to force this investigation onto Major Pribluda. Now that you think – for illogical and personal reasons – that he might be involved in the death of your colleague you’ll never give up the case, will you? Once you get your teeth into a case you don’t let go. Let me be candid – any other prosecutor would put you on medical leave right now. I’ll compromise, I’ll let you continue on the Gorky Park victims, but I will be taking a much closer interest and control of the investigation from now on. And, maybe you should rest for a day or two.’

  ‘What if I just quit?’

  ‘What if you do?’

  ‘That’s just what I’m doing. I resign. Get another senior investigator.’

  The thought and words had come to Arkady at the same moment, as a man might realize simultaneously that he was in a trap and that there was an exit from it, a door emitting light from the other side. It was so obvious.

  ‘I keep forgetting’ – Iamskoy watched him – ‘that you have this irrational streak. I’ve often wondered why you disdain your Party membership so openly. I’ve wondered why you wanted to be an investigator.’

  Arkady had to smile at the simplicity of the situation, and at the peculiar power it gave him. To simply exit? What if in the middle of Hamlet, the prince decided the complications of the plot were too much, denied the ghost’s instructions, and sauntered off stage; Arkady saw in Iamskoy’s eyes just that astonishment and fury at a play cut short. He’d never had Iamskoy’s total attention before, yet Arkady continued to smile until the prosecutor drew his own chalky lips into a wide grin.

  ‘Well, let’s say you do quit, what happens?’ Iamskoy asked. ‘I could destroy you, but that wouldn’t be necessary; you’d lose your Party card and you’d destroy yourself. And your family. What kind of position do you think a chief investigator of Homicide gets after he quits? Night watchman, if you’re fortunate. Not that you’d be making me look very good, either, but I can survive it.’

  ‘So can I.’

  ‘So, let’s talk about what happens to your investigation after you leave it,’ Iamskoy said. ‘Another investigator will have to take over. Well, let’s say I have Chuchin take over. That doesn’t bother you?’

  Arkady shrugged. ‘Chuchin’s not trained for homicide work, but that’s up to you.’

  ‘Good, that’s settled, Chuchin is your successor. A venal moron takes over your investigation and you approve.’

  ‘I don’t care about my investigation, I’m quitting because—’

  ‘Because your friend is dead. For his sake. It would be hypocrisy not to. He was a good detective, a man who would step between you and a bullet, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ Arkady said.

  ‘Then quit, make your gesture,’ Iamskoy said, ‘although I must agree with you that Chuchin is hardly the investigator you are. In fact, considering his lack of experience in homicide and the pressures of success in his first case, I would guess there is only one course of action he could take, and that would be to indict Golodkin for the murders in Gorky Park. Golodkin’s dead, the investigation would be wrapped up in a day or two . . . you see how it all fits together. But knowing the way Chuchin’s mind works, I suspect that won’t be quite enough. He likes to put his stamp on things, to give the screw an extra turn. You know, I suspect he’s capable of naming your dead friend Pasha as Golodkin’s confederate. They died together in a shoot-out between thieves. Just to spite you; after all, if it weren’t for you, Chuchin would still have his best informer. Really, the more I think about it, the more I’m sure he’s going to do it. Speaking as a prosecutor, I’ve always found it a fascinating aspect of human nature that with the same case different investigators will come up with different solutions. All perfectly acceptable. Excuse me.’

  There was no exit, after all. Arkady saw himself standing alone while Iamskoy retrieved his empty pail. Rather than take flight, the geese ran along the beach or onto the lake ice, finding a safe distance at which to coo disconsolately, eyes darting between Arkady and Iamskoy, resenting them equally. Iamskoy carried the pail back to the shed.

  ‘Why do you care so much whether I stay on this case?’ Arkady joined him.

  ‘Histrionics aside, you’re the best homicide investigator I have. It’s my duty to keep you on the case.’ Iamskoy was friendly again.

  ‘If the killer in Gorky Park was this American—’

  ‘Bring me the evidence and we will write the order for arrest together,’ Iamskoy said generously.

  ‘If it was this American, I only have nine days. He leaves May Day Eve.’

  ‘Maybe you’ve made more progress than you know.’

  ‘Nine days. I’ll never get him.’

  ‘Do whatever you see fit, Investigator. You have great talents and I continue to have faith in the outcome of this matter. More than you, I have faith in the system.’ Iamskoy opened the shed door to replace the pail.
‘Trust the system.’

  Before the door shut, Arkady saw in the dark of the shed two geese hanging by trussed feet, their necks wrung. The air was fetid with their ripening. Eiders were protected by law; Arkady couldn’t understand why a man like Iamskoy would chance killing them. He looked back at the beach, which was crowded again with geese fighting for their fair share of the prosecutor’s feed.

  Arkady returned to the Ukraina and started drinking before he noticed an envelope that had been slipped under the door. He tore the envelope open and read the note inside, which said that both Pasha and Golodkin had died instantaneously from shots fired at a distance of no more than half a meter. Some shoot-out: one man killed from behind and the other in the forehead, their bodies found three meters apart. Levin hadn’t signed the note, which didn’t surprise Arkady.

  Arkady wasn’t a big vodka drinker. Most men believed in vodka. There was a saying: ‘There are two kinds of vodka, good and very good.’

  Who followed Pasha and Golodkin to Serafimov 2? Who rapped on the door of that apartment and flashed the kind of identification that would satisfy Pasha and awe Golodkin? There would have been two men, Arkady thought. One visitor wouldn’t have been able to do everything fast enough, and three men would have put even the trusting Pasha on his guard. Who then shot Pasha in the back, picked up his gun and killed the ever more deeply awed Golodkin? Every answer was Pribluda. Osborne was a KGB informant. Major Pribluda wanted to protect Osborne and hide Osborne’s connection to the KGB, and the only way he could do both was at a distance. As soon as Pribluda accepted the case, the KGB would be acknowledging that foreigners were involved. The foreign embassy – the American embassy, nothing but spies – would become concerned and start its own inquiry. No, the investigation had to stay in the hands of the chief homicide investigator of the prosecutor’s office, and it had to be unsuccessful.